August 21, 2024

• Yes, the DNC continued last night. If you’re tired of hearing about it, I’ve got bad news for the next two days…! But, hoping that you’re not, last night was another barn-burner of an event, with speeches from folks like Senators Tammy Duckworth, Chuck Schumer, and Bernie Sanders, former Trump White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham (yes, really), the grandsons of Presidents John F. Kennedy and Jimmy Carter, Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, and the headliners: former First Lady Michelle Obama and her husband, former President Barack Obama. The night also featured a ceremonial roll call vote with DJ accompaniment of individual songs for each state/territory (here’s the full list). And after the vote was complete, Vice President Kamala Harris and Governor Tim Walz phoned in to accept their nominations from a campaign rally in Milwaukee — which just so happens to be the same arena where the RNC was held just last month. LINK
• UPDATE: The following story, which was initially reported via Axios and Reuters, then repeated by organizations like Newsweek and PBS’ Judy Woodruff, has been denied as factual by spokespeople for both the Trump campaign and Israel. Woodruff herself has apologized for repeating the story (LINK). Rather than deleting the story, I will leave it in place coupled with this introduction.
  As I’m writing, news about this is just coming out: Former President Donald Trump has been accused of possibly violating a law known as the Logan Act, passed in 1799, which prohibits unauthorized private citizens from negotiating with foreign governments on behalf of the U.S. Specifically, it seems that Trump has been in contact with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in an attempt to disrupt ceasefire talks. This sounds eerily similar to Trump getting the House to torpedo the bipartisan border deal a few months ago, because he felt that it would be giving President Joe Biden a “win”. LINK
• The Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics is the group that regularly reports on things like unemployment numbers across the country. These numbers are reported on a monthly basis, then revised every quarter, and given that there’s a massive amount of data from businesses and organizations across the country, sometimes those revisions can be significant. Numbers out today show that the report from April 2023-March 2024 were lower than initially estimated. While the revision from the initial estimate lowers those numbers by around 800,000 jobs — the largest downward revision since 2009 — the numbers still show that there was an increase of over 2 million jobs during that time. LINK